Much of the country has been watching in horror as Donald Trump has made good on his promises to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency — delaying 30 regulations, severely limiting the information staffers can release, and installing Scott Pruitt as the agency’s administrator to destroy the agency from within. But even those keeping their eyes on the EPA may have missed a quieter attack on environmental protections now being launched in Congress.

On Tuesday, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is expected to hold a hearing on a bill to undermine health regulations that is based on a strategy cooked up by tobacco industry strategists more than two decades ago. At what Republicans on the committee have dubbed the “Making EPA Great Again” hearing, lawmakers are likely to discuss the Secret Science Reform Act, a bill that would limit the EPA to using only data that can be replicated or made available for “independent analysis.”

The proposal may sound reasonable enough at first. But because health research often contains confidential personal information that is illegal to share, the bill would prevent the EPA from using many of the best scientific studies. It would also prohibit using studies of one-time events, such as the Gulf oil spill or the effect of a partial ban of chlorpyrifos on children, which fueled the EPA’s decision to eliminate all agricultural uses of the pesticide, because these events — and thus the studies of them — can’t be repeated. Although it is nominally about transparency, the bill leaves intact protections that allow industry to keep much of its own inner workings and skewed research secret from the public, while delegitimizing studies done by researchers with no vested interest in their outcome.

The top-billed witness scheduled to provide testimony at the House hearing on Tuesday is a lawyer named Jeffrey Holmstead, who has has worked to block the EPA’s efforts to limit mercury pollution while representing coal companies including Duke Energy, Progress Energy, and Southern Company. Meanwhile, Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican chair of the House Science Committee who has been zealously promoting the“secret science” bill, is also in the pocket of the energy companies. Though he’s also received funding from Koch Industries and iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel Communications), Smith’s biggest contributors are oil and gas companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Also testifying on Tuesday will be Kimberly White of the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry trade group.

This bald industry bid to subvert public health-based regulations that can cut into profit isn’t new. What’s new is that this upside-down environmental attack, in which those who benefit directly from polluting industries are policing the independent scientists who can show the harms of their products, could now succeed. Although the House passed the secret science bill in 2014 and 2015, it never made it to the Senate floor. After it passed the House in 2015, Barbara Boxer called the bill “insane,” Bernie Sanders called it “laughable,” and President Obama promised to veto it. This time, it’s not a joke. With a Republican majority in both houses and Trump in the White House, the secret science act could easily become law.

Graphic: The Intercept

The small group of lawyers and PR strategists orchestrating the secret science effort are closely tied to those attacking the EPA from within. All have connections to either big tobacco, oil, or both — and almost all have been affiliated with a small, right-wing group called the Energy & Environment Legal Institute. It’s interesting that E&E should fixate on transparency since the group has gone to great lengths to conceal its donors. Nevertheless, public records document some of the group’s ties to big coal companies, including the now bankrupt Alpha Natural Resources, Peabody Coal, and Arch Coal.

E&E senior policy fellow Steve Milloy, a former tobacco industry attorney, has perhaps written the most — at least publicly — about the secret science strategy, both in an ebook and for Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News. Milloy calls Myron Ebell, who oversaw Trump’s EPA transition team, his “friend and hero.” In the late 1990s, Milloy and Ebell were both members of the American Petroleum Institute’s Global Climate Science Communications Team, which laid out the oil industry’s strategy to undermine the science of global warming. Meanwhile, three of Milloy’s colleagues from E&E are also members of the EPA landing team. Among them are David Schnare, E&E’s general counsel, who is perhaps best known for harassing Michael Mann and other environmental scientists with FOIA requests, and Amy Oliver Cooke, an energy industry think tanker who created MILF, Mothers In Love with Fracking.

Amy Oliver Cooke describes her love for fracking.

Two other E&E associates have been wrapped up in the secret science strategy for years. The first is Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at both E&E and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who is also a member of Trump’s EPA landing team. Back in the 1990s, Horner worked for Bracewell LLP, the law firm (formerly known as Bracewell & Giuliani) supplying the top witness at Tuesday’s hearing. The dawning awareness of the dangers of second-hand smoke was putting tobacco companies on the defensive, including Horner’s client, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. In a 1996 memo, which seems to be the earliest known reference to the secret science strategy, Horner laid out a plan to fight back.

“We propose creating, beginning with congressional oversight and a goal of enacting legislation, required review procedures which EPA and other federal agencies must follow,” Horner wrote in his memo. “This is important to your organization because, at some point in the near future, EPA will most likely be ordered to re-examine ETS [environmental tobacco smoke].” Horner’s plan? “To construct explicit procedural hurdles the agency must follow in issuing scientific reports. Because there is virtually no chance of affecting change on this issue if the focus is ETS.”

Horner already saw that the secret science approach could subvert far more than the imminent regulations based on the science about second-hand smoke. “Our approach is one of addressing process as opposed to scientific substance, and global applicability to industry rather than focusing on any single industrial sector,” he wrote, going on to explain how the strategy could be used to interfere with the EPA’s efforts to address mercury emissions, hazardous waste, and dioxins as well as restrictions on air pollution.

The Attack on Air Pollution Protections

By 1998, Powell Tate, a lobbying firm that represented R.J. Reynolds, had helped organize a secret science working group to look at questions of “data access,” according to one internal memo. The memo clarified that its intention was to “focus public opinion on the importance of requiring the disclosure of tax-payer funded analytical data.”

Though it was the brainchild of tobacco strategists, the energy industry soon followed Horner’s advice and adopted the secret science approach as a way to hamper air quality improvement efforts. In the 1990s, the EPA began efforts to reduce the amount of tiny particles in the air, a kind of pollution known as PM 2.5, that are produced by combustion from power plants, cars, and manufacturing. The clearest evidence of the need to limit such particles came from the “Six Cities” study, in which a team of Harvard researchers clearly tied higher levels of PM 2.5 particles to increased mortality, as well as lung cancer, asthma, and sudden infant death syndrome.

While the new limits were designed to save lives — preventing 15,000 premature deaths annually, according to EPA projections — the rules would also increase costs in some sectors by, for instance, making energy companies install pollution equipment. In response, a group funded by the Koch brothers rose up to challenge the EPA and the scientists on the grounds that scientists were hiding their data from the public. Citizens for a Sound Economy, a forerunner of the Koch brothers’ current Freedom Works, demanded that the Harvard researchers provide their original data so an “independent” scientist could analyze it.

At first the researchers refused to share the data, which they had collected from individuals with the promise that their health information would remain confidential. Eventually, after an elaborate and expensive pressure campaign, the Six Cities researchers agreed to allow their data to be reanalyzed by two separate teams of researchers. Both confirmed the group’s findings that rates of PM 2.5 were correlated with increased mortality.

The EPA went on to institute the changes. And scientists throughout the world have since come to recognize the dangers posed by small particle air pollution, which accounted for “over 2.1 million premature deaths and 52 million years of healthy life lost in 2010,” according to the 2010 Global Burden of Disease report. The report drew on research by more than 450 experts from around the world and was led by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington; the World Health Organization; the University of Queensland, Australia; Johns Hopkins University; and Harvard University.

Despite the scientific consensus, a small group of extremists has continued to fixate on the idea that the science on the dangers of air pollution is somehow a sham. Even more disturbingly, this small extreme group now holds sway in key parts of the U.S. government. Not least among them is Rep. Lamar Smith, who in 2013 subpoenaed the EPA in yet another effort to obtain the data from the Six Cities study.

In an op-ed that ran in the Wall Street Journal shortly afterward, Smith noted that “the data in question have not been subjected to scrutiny and analysis by independent scientists.” Smith pressed his point in a House Science Committee hearing a few days later, insisting that independent scientists were being denied access to the air pollution data. When Democrat Donna Edwards pressed Smith about who these scientists were, he mentioned the name Jim Enstrom.

Enstrom, you may not be surprised to learn, has been a research fellow at E&E and has received money from the Council for Tobacco Research, the Tobacco Institute, Philip Morris, and R.J. Reynolds. In part because he didn’t disclose his tobacco industry ties in a study he did on the connection between second-hand smoke and mortality (which he found to be inconclusive), he was widely criticized by the scientific community, including the American Cancer Society, and was subsequently dismissed from UCLA.

Correction: Feb. 7, 2017

An earlier version of this article gave the incorrect name of a representative of the American Chemistry Council who testified today before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Her name is Kimberly White, not Kimberly Smith.

Top photo: Water vapor rises from the smoke stack of a petrochemical refinery located along the Houston ship channel in Houston, Texas, on Jan. 3, 2011.

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It should be noted that California has always been a leader of environmental considerations, which often led to the federal EPA adopting CA standards. CA has pledged to resist federal deregulation blow-back from Trump’s administration policy changes.

The EPA has all too often found itself in the cross-hairs of public safety vs corporate greed, expressed to Congress through lobbyists and corporate donations to political campaign funding. Same can be said for all of the federal agencies, hamstrung by many of our self-interested, congressional members used as puppets, that rebuke appropriate legislation in favor of their political careers.

With Trump’s administration rendering most federal departments and agencies impotent, it’s more imperative than ever to support our universities’ research programs, with a mandate for researchers to comply with full-disclosure of their research funding.

A sidebar: USDA animal-inspection database has disappeared from their website. Humane Society is suing. On point here as an example of gov’t science data getting selectively edited or the full memory hole.

A dismissal which was subsequently rescinded by the University when a court threw out their claims.

“Dr. Enstrom not only blew the whistle on junk science driving recent proposed California diesel emissions restrictions, he discovered the state’s lead “scientist” had purchased his degree from a fictitious “Thornhill University” and that many members of the state’s Scientific Review Panel had overstayed term limits by decades.”

The claims were thrown out because they paid the judge ruled in enstroms and he exposed the schools illegal ways of doing business for cal EPA and any regulation they wanted made the school invented the science to do it!

Enstrom exposed the dept head to be a fake and they knew it he never had a phd to get the job but was good liberal player so he got in!

Enstrom said after his federal court win he was going after the rest of the junk science peddlers.

Disease from tobacco is relatively absent in Japan even though they smoke as much as any country, perhaps this is because NO CHEMICALS are allowed in the cigarettes. So is the scam about not being sued for this because they know about it.

I worked for the EPA in the 1970s. Industry big money can always buy science done in a way and scientists to perform research to support their aims. We need new in vitro test tube and in vivo animal models to demonstrate toxicity such as chronic inflammation which plays a role in most diseases and condition. Further, we test individual chemicals and all but ignore the potential toxic synergy between compounds. In vitro test are available that could serve to identify compounds of interest as either drugs or toxic chemicals and further check for synergy in identified compounds. It is hard to argue against open data, but new and valid testing testing would be a powerful and open process. Companies now pay for testing, more efficient cost-effective tests openly published would benefit all concerned.

For my purpose in science synergy is when two thing work better or are more toxic collectively than one. Multiple antibiotics such as anti-virals for HIV or curcumin plus capsicum anti-inflammatory synergy. Their are some good “test tube” assays to determine such synergy that are in common use.

They probably do, however they’re either too ignorant and/or arrogant to believe that they and theirs will be affected by the poisoning of the air and water around them. I’m guessing that they believe that they can protect themselves from the devastation and the hell with everyone else.

the conclusions are open, the data is available. scientists all over the world review the state of the science constantly. the question is why are people ignoring the science; the answer is money from the fossil fuel industry.

That’s the wrong question. The proper question is, why should anyone be allowed to emit any industrial products without proving that they’re safe. This is called “The Precautionary Principle” and is infinitely better than the ass backward system that we have, where the burden of proof is on the EPA or others to show that it’s not safe.

Then we have EPA breaking the law doing human experiments on pm 2.5. Those people will face federal charges soon along with other dept of federal health who pushed federal grants to non profits for illegal lobbying using same funds followed by breaking IRS laws on 501c non profits and political actions!

You have it all up for your side when you stated they kept after them with Foia requests that I know were constantly being drug out as long as possible!

The point of replication is to make policy/regulations you must prove your claim instead you guys went study shopping just like the SG reports did to find anything that would back up your so called claims of eminent doom that was nothing but sky is falling hype!

Congress ordered you provide your proof instead you marched in crying moms from the left with kids that were deformed or whatever, yet you refused to provide any proof!

So you ran to a leftist president to force your bs thru via EO!

Your Environmental tobacco smoke study wasn’t just tossed as junk science after your EPA so called scientists were interviewed it showed that shs was nothing more than 96% water vapor and ordinary air from the sg report 1989 page 80.

Junk science as Milloy has repeatedly called you guys out for is over!

You also fail to state that after 100 years of trying they can’t prove a single tobacco disease even exists!

Belief systems and linked to perpetual junk science days are over, you e finally heard the fat lady sing!

Article seems little wordier than it needs to be but whatever, Sharon, whatevs! It’s nice someone is talking about clean air and water and stuff. Those are nice things.

It’s funny how the woman in the video interview, when the interviewer asks “what is fracking?” in the first minute or two, during her entire answer, she is shaking her head. So, kind of a mixed message to people who are sensitive to those kind of cues regarding forthrightness and stuff. Little bit of a mixed message, when people do that!

When is T.I. going to stop holding back my comments about usa_naziland & open your eyes to the authoritarian you have in a powerful position. Placing other cartel members of corporations at the helm of agencies they will destroy for ‘making a deluded nation supposedly’ great again. You need to grow a back bone american’s & reporters too.

The world won’t need to turn its back on usa_naziland; it’ll of done it itself soon enough. We have rules on food & animal welfare, you can’t even offer food to homeless people without been arrested by the gestapo. Pathetic blinkered people not willing to stand up & be counted. But quite happy to have untold millions of foreigners slaughtered for your death-culture society.

Doing things which may result in the death of a person is generally considered negligent homicide is it not? Doing these things knowingly is considered willful homicide is it not? And doing these things with the intent on eliminating persons from the face of the earth is called what?

regulations means PROTECTIONS
Protections is the word the greedy rapacious thieves leave out in the meaning of the law. It goes like this… Humans need protection from a bad environment. The good persons in congress write a law to protect humans. The law is comprised of “instructions for implementation” more commonly refered to as regulations. This is a good thing. But it costs a lttle extra and the thieves of wallstreet who rob America and spit on the people and profit from American deaths in wars (cheaper to die than pay health care for wounded) do not want to pay the extra for the useless 99%.

What I find interesting is that the concerns of the 50′ and 60’s the ushered in the EPA are quickly forgotten in this modern day equivalent of Doomsday IN slow motion. How quickly the people forget the past. Nixon issued an executive order that eventually led to the creation of the EPA. Apparently poisoning the Americans is no longer a concern to those seeking to fatten their overstuffed wallets. I’m just wondering how much money they can count when ‘they’ can’t breathe or when fresh water isn’t drinkable. As pointed out in this article, these are the exact same group of paid goons that spread lies for the tobaco and energy companies in the past and present. It should be obvious now that this new iteration of government cares not a whit about the crisis of global warming and poisoning. They’re just speeding up what I believe is inevitable the destruction of most, if not all of civilization. Business as usual has reached levels never seen before of destruction of countless ecosystems and all the species that live there. The actions of the EPA saved the bald eagle and other species affected by DDT and helped mitigate the poison spewed from burning coal the caused acid rain. So the Statue of Liberty has now another enemy to worry about, dissolution due to acid rain, again.

If you plan on destroying any reasonable response to global warming, it would be intolerably inconsistent to allow the EPA to continue with its job. Straight back to 19th century regulations we go, with 21st century problems. And do not worry, the very rich will always find a way to prosper and be happy. There might be a few rough years when billions are dying, but that will pass.

Even if it were true that the banning of DDT caused human deaths, on which I have no knowledge one way or the other, it’s not at all OK to poison our planet for any reason, let alone just to save some members of an overpopulated species. Mosquito-borne diseases are one of nature’s ways of keeping people out of certain areas; if you don’t want to get mosquito-borne diseases, don’t live there.

“Our approach is one of addressing process as opposed to scientific substance…”
The above clearly shows conspiracy to ignore basic commandments like Thou Shall Not Lie, and Thou Shall Not Commit Murder’

I am going off to the hospital now to visit perhaps the nicest man one could ever have known currently existing on life support tubes and equipment, whose life sadly is being cut short as he is dying of lung cancer as did three of his cousins, all from smoking.

Remember how decadent the Tobacco industry was in conspiring to hide the depredations of their product? That industry’s profit-crazed executives did everything they could to hide the harmful effects of their product and also entice the masses to both utilize and become addicted to it.

Now the same type profit-crazed lunatics are conspiring to do the same type things to all that surrounds us and all that we breathe and take into our bodies.

One of the Rethugs goals has got to be to kill as many people as possible, in what ever way possible, saving only those who are part of their tribe. That, of course, doesn’t include all those ignorant, clueless, poor whites who support them in election after election. But eventually they’ll pay the price too.

Highly illogical; cherry-picking rebuttals that are nonsensical would seem to indicate the spreading of feces of male bovine. I would suggest that it has been propagated by a Denebian slime-devil or some other insignicant troll.

I hate that they put this crap in our water. Here are some things that hardly anyone knows about fluoridation because of industry lies and the government acting as a lackey of the industry:

1. The idea for putting fluoride in our water came from the aluminum industry as a way to dispose of their waste without paying for disposal. The industry couldn’t care less about tooth decay except as it provides a pretext for polluting our water with their waste.

2. The fluoride they put in drinking water is not the same chemically as the fluoride found as a natural mineral.

that’s the funny part – Mar Under a Lago
It is almost as if a certain cult of aliens got stranded on earth long ago and want to get back home at any cost – hurry up with the science already, we are running out of time and need to get off this planet before it dies like the last one we got stuck on.

sharing info today is no longer doable because the patent attorneys now work on behalf of greedy wallstreet thieves who want monopolies and power, not social progress. It used to be for the good of all society, that inventions eventually became “public property” for the enjoyment for all so as to build a comfortable society. But is seems the pigs on wallstreet dont give a flying pig about America.http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2014/07/26/how-long-does-a-patent-last/id=50534/